Somatheeram Ayurvedic Beach Resort Kovalam

... i wanted. Locals started staring, hotel management started worrying and I got even more threatening. I never moved from my three wheeled trap and after five minutes he caved in and drove me to my desired destination. He looked devasted. I felt triumphant!

I was up at 5am the next morning to catch my flight down south. The first place i'm visiting in Kerala is Kovalam. It's grown from a hippy hide-out of the 80's to a package holiday ...

... going to cycle to the Neryyar Wildlife Park, which is just a day's ride away and we may go up to a hill station from there. Then we will come back down to Kovalam, pick up post, get the overnight train to Chennai on the 3rd and the flight to Bangkok is just after midnight on the 5th. If anyone has any good suggestions for places to stay in Bangkok please do share them with us (by the way Claire thanks for the one for ...

... Zelf Paul (de oprichter van het project) is voor een paar weken terug naar Belgie gegaan. Bij zijn terugkomst had hij wel Mignonnetjes en Chocotofs mee voor iedereen. MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...!!! En smaken dat da doet! Na een weekje examenstress (al kan ik niet zeggen dat ze daar echt last van hebben...) mogen de studenten een weekje vakantie nemen waarna een nieuw schooljaar begint voor hen . Sommigen in een lagere groep, anderen blijven nog ...

... train, showed us where to get off and where to get our next train from etc so he turned out to be quite useful! When we got to Varkala we took a tuk tuk to our accommodation that we booked while in Kochi. A beach hut on the cliffs overlooking the sea. A really nice place. Varkala is a lot more touristy than Kochi with more white people around than locals. There's lots of good places to eat and have a beer (even found a place to watch live premier league yesterday - Lydia was ...

... By the time we found the party we were both laughing - how could we miss this - it was big, loud, colorful, and downright strange - it was unlike any parade we have ever been to. There were firecrackers, drums, kathkali dancers wearing peacock feathers and made-up so they almost looked non-human. The dancse was mesmerizing. There was a giant boat filled with young girls who pretended to row and several men carrying the boat lifting it up and down to simulate ...

... unsteady : 500 rupees bills should be brown, but frequently they are blue ( the exact color of 100 rupees bill), so that you think you gave somebody a 500 when in fact it was only a 100 ... Bills are also cut unevenly. In a word, Indian bills look like Monopoly money. you therefore reahc for another 500 bill in exchange for the 100 bill that the lovely lady is holding up for you. Naturally, you ...

... and very cheap room at Green Land Hotel and then had a wander round, trying to find somewhere to spend NYE that wasn't either hideously kitsch or hideously expensive. We had an excellent lunchtime thali at Arya Niwas restaurant and then rested until it was time to put on our glad rags for the evening's festivities. My glad rags, by the way, simply consist of a slightly nicer pair of flip-flops than my everyday travelling sandals ...

... on a final reading marrathon while scoffing even more seafood for a few days. Besides lounging around, we managed to get off our growing rears to do one last blast of cookery in time to wow everyone with our skills on our return. No recipies for curried turkey though, which I'm sure would have come in useful... The beach in Varkala was pretty nice but even after 9 months we still have absolutely zero tolerance to the sun and ...

Wednesday 31st May '06 (Summary) Good night's rest in the GTDC hotel in Margao - up and out by noon and down to the station by rickshaw through the rain. Train was due in at 12.35 an impossibility in my opinion but nevertheless one had to be there on time, just in case a miracle happened and the train that was chugging down from Delhi arrived on schedule! I asked some Indian lady details regarding the train and she informed that it was running an hour late, she too was travelling ...

... here, we have been able to get western food which we were all very happy about. Although some of the Indian interpretations of western dishes are quite interesting. Lori ordered a tuna salad one night and the plate of food she received looked like cat food with a few slices of tomato around the edge! It was so vile she didn't eat it! Anyway, there is also surprisingly, a German Bakery here which we have been to for breakfast a few times. As a result of all this ...